Wednesday, June 19, 2013

Achdus - A Turn for the Worse

What is happening to my people? I am not giving up hope. But
I must admit that I am discouraged by the level of animosity we observant Jews
have descended into - towards each other.

We were making some progress. At least as far as some
semblance of Achdus in Orthodoxy is concerned. Charedim and Centrist Jews as
represented by organizations like Agudah and the RCA have found common ground
on many issues and there seems to have been a meeting of the minds on issues
that in the past were divisive. Not that the two organizations agreed with each
other on everything. But I detected a far more collegial relationship between us.

But the tide has turned and the hateful rhetoric now being heard is
disturbing. And it seems mostly to be coming from the right.

I don’t know much about Rabbi Stav other than what is
available in a short bio. He is a Religious Zionist graduate of Mekaz HaRav, a Hesder Rosh Yeshiva, and the head of Tzohar.

Last week Rav Ovadia Yosef called Rabbi Stav, who is in the
running for Chief Rabbi of Israel, a Rasha (evil man) and a danger to
Judaism. (And from Ynet: …appointing him to the Chief Rabbinate was like bringing
idolatry into the Temple.)

Rabbi David Stav was subject to physical and verbal
intimidation Sunday night while attending the wedding of the daughter of Rabbi
Shmuel Rabinowitz, Rabbi of the Western Wall and the Holy places.

Stav said that during the proceedings, several youths shoved
him and attempted to hit him and pour water on him.

As he left the wedding, the youths also called him “an evil
man” and “sheigetz,” a derogatory Yiddish term for a non-Jewish male.

The RCA responded to all this with a statement (translated from Hebrew in Tablet) directed to
Rabbi Stav which in part said the following:

We trembled when we heard the terrible words which Rabbi
Ovadia Yosef expressed regarding you this past Saturday night, and also of the
events in Bnei Brak at the wedding of the daughter of Rabbi Rabinowitz. Is this
Torah and its students? “Woe to this one who learned Torah, woe to his father
who taught him Torah, woe to his rebbe who taught him Torah. Such a person who
learned Torah, see how crooked his deeds are, and see how ugly his ways are.”

Rabbi Aryeh Deri, who heads Rabbi Yosef’s Sephardi political
party, Shas, said that Rabbi Yosef has nothing personal against Rabbi Stav. He
just meant that if he were elected Chief Rabbi - his controversial non mainstream
Psak on various issues would be harmful to the Jewish people.

I don’t know… it’s kind of hard to fit that meaning into Rav
Yosef’s words. But even if I were to accept these apologetics to be true, it
does not explain all the acrimony against other observant Jews, like Rabbis Dov
Lipman and Shai Peron (or Rabbis Natan Slifkin and Nosson Kamenetsky). Nor does
it explain the kind of rhetoric one hears from the right about – even religious
Jews – who support the idea of making the draft laws in Israel fairer; and
requiring Charedi schools to have a core secular curriculum. It seems the fear
generated by this phenomenon has caused us - two observant and idealistic factions
- to be a people apart… with no possible avenue for rapprochement.

The wedge is getting deeper… and if it continues along these
lines, what will Judaism look like in the future? Demographics are in favor of
Charedim. Even if Centrists can maintain a community of their own, they will eventually
be marginalized by the sheer enormity of right.

The way things seem to be going - Centrists will
be seen by them as the latest version of Conservative Judaism. It won’t even surprise
me if Rav Shamshon Raphael Hirsch will eventually be seen in the same way as Moses Mendelsohn!
That the Hirschean Torah Im Derech Eretz approach is considered a B’Dieved by
Charedim - means that the process of Rav Hirsch’s de-legitimization has already begun.

What kind of people will this growing demographic be? Aside
from a nation filled with poverty, it seems to already be spawning violent
reactionaries. Although Charedi rabbinic leaders call them hooligans - not
representative of real Charedim – it is clear that the motives of these ‘hooligans’
are generated by the kind of rhetoric heard from Rav Yosef about Rav Stav.

And this is just the latest in a long line of such rhetoric from the
right… and the youthful (and occasionally not so youthful) expressions of violence
in the name of their cause. Whenever and where ever this kind of violence happens, Charedi
leaders, politicians, and journalists say
that it does not represent them. That the perpetrators are just a bunch of juvenile delinquents clothed in the
trappings of ultra-Orthodoxy.

Sorry, I don’t buy that. These are people who are simply
taking the words of their leaders to the next level. They may be few in number
relative to the whole. But they are not delinquent. They are zealots for their
cause. They are located all over
Israel and the United States in places like Meah Shearim, Bnei Brak, Ramat Bet
Shemesh, Williamsburg, and New Square. And they are all acting in the name of
their particular Daas Torah. A Daas Torah whose rhetoric (like Rav
Yosef’s words about Rav Stav) fuels their violence.

This morning I was ‘treated’ by CBS News to the spectacle of Barbra
Streisand commenting on this whole scene. She is in Israel on a concert tour
and performed yesterday at a celebration for Shimon Peres’s 90th
birthday. She complained about what she read in the media regarding violent
religious activism on women’s rights issues. Specifically mentioning sex segregated (Mehadrin) buses, the Women of
the Wall (WoW), and public performances by female singers. This story was accompanied
by visuals of youthful Charedim at the
first ‘peaceful’ protest of WoW doing their best to look like a bunch of
screaming radicals bent on doing innocent people harm – just because they
disagreed with them.

That she is not religious and has intermarried is not the
point. Nor is the point whether one supports or opposes these issues. The point
is that she is representative of what the world sees. They see people trying to assert their
religious rights peacefully - being treated by Orthodox Jews the way the Taliban treats infidels. Those images are not that different from the
images of Islamic fundamentalists rioting because somebody dishonored the their
Prophet Mohamed.

Is this our future? Will we become the Jewish version of the
Taliban? These are the images they now see with a Jewish American icon condemning
it. The more strident the Charedi leaders become in promoting their ideals
while vilifying anyone in opposition, the more likely things like this will
increase. And as their demographic grows,
so too will the image of Judaism become more like the image of the Taliban.

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About Me

My outlook on Judaism is based mostly on the teachings of my primary Rebbe, Rabbi Aaron Soloveichik from whom I received my rabbinic ordination. It is also based on a search for spiritual truth. Among the various sources that put me on the right path, two great philosophic works stand out: “Halakhic Man” and “Lonely Man of Faith” authored by the pre-eminent Jewish philosopher and theologian, Rabbi, Dr. Joseph B. Soloveitchik. Of great significance is Rabbi, Dr. Norman Lamm's conceptualization and models of Torah U’Mada and Dr. Eliezer Berkovits who introduced me to the world of philosophic thought. Among my early influences were two pioneers of American Elementary Torah Chinuch, Rabbis Shmuel Kaufman and Yaakov Levi. The Yeshivos I attended were Yeshivas Telshe for early high school and more significantly, the Hebrew Theological College where for a period of ten years, my Rebbeim included such great Rabbinic figures as Rabbis Mordechai Rogov, Shmaryahu Meltzer, Yaakov Perlow, Herzl Kaplan, and Selig Starr. I also attended Roosevelt University where I received my Bachelor's Degree - majoring in Psychology.